


turns them to hunters

by waywardbitch



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean-Centric, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 18:15:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14676675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waywardbitch/pseuds/waywardbitch
Summary: Dean's filled to the brim with things he'll never know how to say. He hopes what he can give is enough.





	turns them to hunters

Dean’s memories of his mother are held in faded vignettes. They come in fits and starts, completely out of his control. He’ll be driving and watching the endless dotted lines against the highway, like now, and suddenly he remembers the soft scent of her hair tickling his nose, sensory memory strong where episodic fails. The taste of tomato-rice soup strong on his tiny, aching tongue. Her voice, melodic and sing-song, “Eat up, buddy, food makes you strong! You wanna be strong like daddy, don’t you?” And Dean would smile, he knows he would, can feel the earth-splitting grin on his face like it never left, teeth spaced apart in the hollow of his toddler mouth.

It hurts, the bits of his mother his memory allowed him to keep, because remembering her is a punch in the gut. Her cheap drugstore perfume fills the air and he’s brought back to being four and helpless, his world beginning and ending with such a simple palindrome of a woman.

  
But he’d rather have that hurt than nothing at all - the place in his cracked, splintered soul that absorbed the feel of his mother’s arms around his torso throbs with its own heartbeat, refusing to die, even when the source of that bittersweet taste is long gone.

  
He spares a glance at his little brother in the passenger seat with a profound sadness. The screaming baby he saved from that burning house in Lawrence, the one he picked up and never really let go of. He doesn’t get to reminisce. He hears the word mother and there’s nothing but an absence that surely eats at his stomach, rises like bile in his throat. There’s nothing to look back on and self-flagellate with there. Nothing to miss, except the fact that there’s nothing to miss at all.

Sometimes, Dean wishes he had those freaky powers that Andy had, back when they were still young and bright-eyed and desperate to finish their dad’s mission. To get revenge for the mother they lost. He wants to show Sammy his memories, to let him feel the mother he never got to know. If he could, he’d let Sam imagine the phantom kiss of his mother’s lips against his forehead, gentle and reassuring. “Go back to sleep, baby,” she’d whisper to him as she dried his tears, soft smile just for him. “It was just a bad dream. Monsters aren’t real.” Her hands in his hair, a shiver of the spine at the comfort. Little eyelids fluttering back to slumber.

Instead, he grips the steering wheel in one hand and lets his other drift to the muscle of Sam’s shoulder. Squeezes tight in a way that he hopes conveys that desperate ache. Thinks he gets it when Sam looks away from the window and smiles at him. Almost breaks at the memory of his mother’s smile, replicating itself on his baby brother’s lips.

**Author's Note:**

> As someone who lost their parents, it's really therapeutic for me to try to convey that desperate feeling of love you have for the ones that survived and are hurting with you, albeit in a different way. I like to imagine that Dean wants nothing more than for Sam to know that love.
> 
> title from Howl by Florence and the Machine, "Be careful of the curse that falls on young lovers, it starts out soft and sweet and turns them to hunters." The soundtrack to this, essentially. It's more of me shoving my feelings towards my grief onto characters but hey, that's fanfic for ya!!! 
> 
> there may be more to this, snapshots of that longing on Dean's side, getting to know Sam through him, who knows? Not me. These characters do whatever they want when I write them. I like to imagine this is right before Amara brings her back to life, but the timeline for it is kinda up in the air, so whatever works for you works for me!


End file.
